Richard Whittall:

The Globalist's Top Ten Books in 2016: The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer

Middle East Eye: "

The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer is one of the weightiest, most revelatory, original and important books written about sport"

“The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer has helped me immensely with great information and perspective.”

Bob Bradley, former US and Egyptian national coach: "James Dorsey’s The Turbulent World of Middle Eastern Soccer (has) become a reference point for those seeking the latest information as well as looking at the broader picture."

Alon Raab in The International Journal of the History of Sport: “Dorsey’s blog is a goldmine of information.”

Play the Game: "Your expertise is clearly superior when it comes to Middle Eastern soccer."

Andrew Das, The New York Times soccer blog Goal: "No one is better at this kind of work than James Dorsey"

David Zirin, Sports Illustrated: "Essential Reading"

Change FIFA: "A fantastic new blog'

Richard Whitall of A More Splendid Life:

"James combines his intimate knowledge of the region with a great passion for soccer"

Christopher Ahl, Play the Game: "An excellent Middle East Football blog"

James Corbett, Inside World Football

Thursday, January 30, 2014

Soccer fans and youth groups denounce the military-backed government and deposed president Morsi

By James M. Dorsey

Multiple conflicts between Egypt’s military-backed
government and the country’s foremost soccer clubs that pit militant soccer
fans against both Egypt’s autocratic leaders and club managers could force
world soccer governing body FIFA to suspend Egypt.

The disputes reflect the broader crisis that has shipwrecked
Egypt’s transition from autocracy to a politically more liberal society
following mass anti-government demonstrations in 2011 that forced President
Hosni Mubarak to resign after 30 years in office. Militant soccer fans played a
key role in the toppling of Mr. Mubarak and resistance to subsequent military
rule.

In Egypt’s latest twists and turns, sports minister and
former national soccer team player Taher Abou Zeid has spotlighted the Middle
East and North Africa’s incestuous relationship between sports and politics
that FIFA largely chooses to ignore. FIFA has a history of enforcing its nominal
ban on political interference in football only when that intrusion becomes so
flagrant that the soccer body is left with no choice but to act.

Mr. Abou Zeid twice in the last six months sought to replace
the management of Cairo arch rivals Al Ahli SC and Al Zamalek SC, Africa’s two
top performing clubs. He succeeded in the case of Zamalek that has been managed
by an interim board after Mr. Abou Zeid sacked its elected chairman, Mahmoud
Abbas, last October. Fans of both clubs have long denounced management as
corrupt and demanded that they resign.

Controversial Al Ahli chairman Hassan Hamdi proved a tougher
nut to crack. Mr. Hamdi was being investigated on corruption charges and had
his assets frozen under President Mohammed Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically
elected president who was deposed by the military last July.

Mr. Abou Zeid initially dismissed Mr. Hamdi and his board on
January 18 after the Al Ahli management refused to participate in a one-year,
$10 million premier league broadcast deal with state-owned broadcaster, Egypt
Radio and Television Union (ERTU).

The deal was designed to infuse cash into financially
troubled clubs that have suffered as a result of professional leagues having
been suspended for much of the last three years and fans being banned from
matches since they resumed in late 2013. Mr. Hamdi felt Al Ahli, Egypt’s most
popular club with an estimated 50 million supporters, was better served by
signing a separate agreement worth $5.8 million with Lebanon’s Future Media
Company.

In contrast to Zamalek’s Mr. Abbas, Mr. Hamdi successfully
persuaded Egyptian Prime Minister Hazem Al-Beblawi to override Mr. Abou Zaid’s
decision. Al Ahli’s board elections should have been held last year but were
postponed because of the political crisis engulfing the country.

The ERTU deal was also designed as an affront to state-owned
Qatari broadcaster Al Jazeera, five of whose reporters and producers have been
detained on suspicion of spreading false information harmful to state security
and membership in a terrorist organization, the Muslim Brotherhood, which has
been banned and criminalized since Mr. Morsi’s overthrow.

The ERTU has accused Al Jazeera of illegally using its
equipment during the coverage of protests against Mr. Morsi’s overthrow on
Cairo’s Rabaa al-Adawiya Square. Hundreds were killed when security forces last
August brutally cleared the square where pro-Morsi protesters were camped out.
ERTU ignored Al Jazeera’s rights to African Cup matches by broadcasting in
March a match between Egypt and Ghana. Two weeks later, Mr. Abou Zeid ordered
the EFA not sell the rights to Egypt’s premier league to Al Jazeera three
months after the network had acquired the rights for a period of three years.

Relations between Qatar and Egypt have deteriorated because
of the Gulf state’s support for the Brotherhood and its hosting of prominent
figures associated with the group, including popular preacher Sheikh Yusuf
Qaradawi, who regularly denounces Egyptian strongman Field Marshal Abdul Fattah
al-Sisi and calls for the overthrow of the military-backed government.

In a January 22 letter to the Egyptian Football Association
(EFA), FIFA secretary general Jerome Valcke gave the soccer body until February
5 to report on the state of affairs. "Should the current situation
persist, we would have no choice than to refer the case to the appropriate FIFA
bodies for consideration and possible decision, including sanctions which might
lead to a suspension of the EFA," Mr. Valcke warned.

Mr. Abou Zeid’s attempts to remove the management of Al Ahli
and Zamalek has done little to endear him to militant fans who constitute one
of the largest organized civic groups in Egypt. The fans have vowed to disrupt
the minister’s bans on spectators.

Hundreds militants fans demonstrated in central Cairo in the
walk-up to the January 25 anniversary of the popular revolt against Mr. Mubarak
denouncing both the military-backed government as well as Mr. Morsi and his
Muslim Brotherhood. Days earlier, Zamalek fans stormed the stands during their
club’s match against Haras El-Hodoud in protest against the spectator ban.

"We removed Mubarak, but not the system that is still
in place. We will not stop until we achieve the goals of the January 25
revolution: bread, freedom and social justice,” one of the militants said.

Despite perceptions that a majority of Egyptians support the
overthrow of Mr. Morsi and the return of a military-backed strong government,
the militant’s comments against the backdrop of the results of a referendum on
a new constitution earlier this month reflect a sentiment that is boiling among
youth who constitute a majority of the Egyptian population.

As a result, the referendum’s outcome may not truly reflect
the public mood. Most importantly, few youth were among the 38.6 percent of
Egyptians who cast their vote. It is unclear what percentage of the 61.4
percent that abstained from voting did so as a protest against the military’s
revival of the autocratic state and what percentage stayed home for other
reasons.

James M. Dorsey is a
Senior Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS),
Nanyang Technological University. He is also co-director of the University of
Würzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture, and the author of The Turbulent World of Middle East
Soccer blog and a forthcoming book with the same
title.

Tuesday, January 21, 2014

When Aziz Yildirim, the head of Turkey’s foremost soccer
club, Fenerbahce SK, denounced this week an appeals court decision upholding
his conviction in a massive match fixing scandal, he drew a parallel with a construction-related
corruption scandal that is rocking the government of Prime Minister Recep
Tayyip Erdogan and pitting the country’s foremost Islamist factions against one
another.

Mr. Yildirim’s comparison stands on strong ground despite
the fact that most experts on Turkish soccer as well as fans, including those
of Fenerbahce, concede that Turkish football is thoroughly corrupt and that
match fixing is a fact of life. Mr. Yildirim was sentenced to six years and
three months in prison and is barred from serving as a club official. He has
one last chance to appeal which would allow him to remain in office until he
has exhausted his options.

In a statement following the court decision, Mr. Yildirim suggested
the verdict was part of a power struggle between Mr. Erdogan and Fethullalh
Gulen, the prime minister’s Islamist ally-turned-nemesis. Mr. Erdogan has accused
Mr. Gulen, a self-exile Islamist preacher who operates a global media,
education and business empires estimated to be worth $20 billion, of
establishing a state within the state.

Mr. Gulen initially supported Mr. Erdogan’s rise to power
and worked with him to bring the powerful

Turkish military under civilian
control. The two men’s political and commercial power base is inextricably
intertwined but their interests have over time diverged as Mr. Gulen targeted urban
conservatives while Mr. Erdogan strengthened his hold on the rural vote. In a
prelude to the construction scandal, Mr. Erdogan attempted last fall to curb
Mr. Gulen’s influence by announcing that he would shut down tutoring schools
operated by the preacher’s movement.

The high stakes power struggle between the two men, already
evident in the match fixing scandal, moved into high gear in December when an investigation
by the police and judiciary, believed to be populated by supporters of Mr.
Gulen, into a construction-related corruption scandal forced four of the prime minister’s
ministers to resign and a reshuffle of Mr. Erdogan’s cabinet. Mr. Gulen has
denied any association with the investigation.

Many in Turkey nonetheless give credit to the corruption
allegations but believe that the timing of the arrests raises questions about
the independence of the police and the judiciary. Those qualms are certain to
be discussed during Mr. Erdogan’s visit this week to Brussels and the European
Union designed to give a new boost to Turkey’s EU membership bid.

Mr. Erdogan has charged that the investigation was an
attempt to undermine him in advance of crucial municipal elections in March
that are widely expected to be interpreted as a referendum on his increasingly
troubled rule. At stake in the battle with Mr. Gulen and the elections that are
to be followed by Turkey’s first ever direct election of its president is not
only Mr. Erdogan’s political future but also history’s initial judgement of
moderate political Islam’s foremost foray into government. Mr. Erdogan, whose status
as the successful embodiment of moderate political Islam has suffered a series
of setbacks that started with last June’s mass anti-government Gezi Park protests,
risks seeing his reputation irreparably damaged.

Much like in the match fixing scandal, Mr. Erdogan has
sought to limit the political fallout of the construction scandal by cleansing
institutions of his opponents and seeking to control the legal process. Up to
2,000 police officers have been either relieved of their duties or moved to
other jobs in recent weeks as have prosecutors who ordered the detention of
three sons of ministers as well as the head of state-owned Halkbank. Among the
prosecutors shoved aside is Zekeriya Oz, the man who initiated the
investigation into the match fixing scandal.

"I, Aziz Yildirim, do not respect this illegal
judgement, I do not recognise this political decision," Mr. Yildirim said.
His statement was echoed by Mr. Erdogan who described the appeals court
decision as a political manoeuvre in advance of the municipal elections.

Mr. Yildirim was first sentenced to jail in 2012 and fined some
500,000 euros for match-fixing during the 2010-2011 season and of forming a
criminal gang, but was freed pending his appeal.

Mr. Erdogan, a former soccer player and Fenerbahce fan, has
fought hard in the past 2.5 years to spare Mr. Yildirim the worst. He viewed
the corruption charges against the soccer boss as an effort by Mr. Gulen, a man
some prominent players consult before deciding to switch clubs, to muscle his
way into what the prime minister considered his political domain. Mr. Gulen was
believed to have wanted Mr. Yildirim removed so that someone closer to his
movement could take control of the club.

In standing up for Mr. Yildirim, Mr. Erdogan hoped to garner
support among millions of fans of Fenerbahce, the crown political jewel in
Turkish soccer. Many of those fans however joined supporters of Istanbul arch
rivals Besiktas JK and Galatasary SK in manning the front lines last June in
mass anti-government demonstrations. Mr. Erdogan’s government has since sought
to criminalize militant fan groups.

If the degree of Mr. Erdogan’s success in seeking to shield
Mr. Yildirim is any indication, the jury remains out on whether he can insulate
himself from personal involvement in the construction corruption scandal that
involves the awarding of large public works to groups close to the government,
amendments to zoning laws that favoured those groups and patronage politics
that generated funding for the prime minister’s political machinery.

Mr. Yildirim was convicted despite Mr. Erdogan’s
manipulations that initially lead to the soccer club chairman’s acquittal by
the Turkish Football Federation (TFF). That however did not stop supporters of
Mr. Gulen in the judiciary from pursuing the matter. It also did not prevent
European soccer governing body UEAFA from banning Fenerbahce from European
tournaments for two years on charges of match fixing.

Nevertheless, Mr. Erdogan’s intervention was in many ways a
dry run for his effort to manage the construction scandal, the most serious
crisis in his decade in office which catapulted him into becoming the third
most important leader in modern Turkish history after Kemal Mustafa Ataturk,
the visionary who carved Turkey out of the ruins of the Ottoman empire, and
Turgut Ozal, the conservative politician who liberalized its economy and was
the only politician prior to Mr. Erdogan to successfully stand up to the
military.

As the match fixing scandal erupted and Mr. Yildirim and 92
others were indicted on match fixing-related charges, Mr. Erdogan and Mr. Gulen
adopted diametrically opposed positions. Mr. Gulen’s position constituted an
early indication that he was ready to challenge Mr. Erdogan’s grip on power.

While Mr. Gulen and his supporters pushed for harsh
sentences, Mr. Erdogan forced a law through parliament that limited the
penalties for both officials and clubs. The law prevented Mr. Yildirim from
being sentenced to tens of years in prison. The TFF meanwhile rejected a
proposal backed by the prime minister that would have shielded clubs guilty of
match fixing from being relegated.

Three months later, Mr. Erdogan succeeded in getting the
federation to clear Fenerbahce as a club and 15 others of charges of
involvement in match-fixing. His interference prompted the TFF’s three top
officials, including its vice chairman, Gospel Gumusdag, a brother-in-law of Mr.
Erdogan, to resign. Mr. Erdogan defended
his moves on the grounds that punishing institutions rather than individuals
would amount to penalizing “millions of fans who set their hearts on these
institutions.''

James M. Dorsey is a Senior Fellow at the S.
Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological
University. He is also co-director of the University of Würzburg’s Institute
for Fan Culture, and the author of The Turbulent World of Middle East
Soccer blog and a forthcoming book with the same
title.

James M. Dorsey at Play the Game 2013. Photo: Thomas Søndergaard / Play the Game

In September last year, a Singaporean court ordered journalist and blogger James M. Dorsey to reveal his sources for a report he did on an audit of the connection between Mohammed bin Hammam and World Sports Group (WSG). Dorsey appealed the order to the Singaporean Court of Appeal, who had it overturned.

The Singapore Court of Appeal has issued a judgment outlining the grounds of the decision to overturn the disclosure of sources order issued on the Singapore-based journalist and blogger James M. Dorsey by a Singapore court.

WSG initiated proceedings after Dorsey disclosed details of a PricewaterhouseCoopers report revealing payments to bin Hammam, quoted sources close to the AFC questioning the WSG contract and revealed that Malaysian police had opened an investigation into the theft of documents related to one of the payments. WSG asked the Singapore High Court to order Dorsey to reveal his sources. In the court hearing, which took place on 28 September 2012, the court ruled in favour of WSG, and Dorsey was ordered to reveal his sources for the report.

The revelation of the sources would allow WSG to start legal action on charges of breach of confidentiality and defamation against Dorsey and his sources.The court ordered Dorsey to take part in pre-action interrogatories sought by WSG, but according to the Court of Appeal judgment released last week, this claim could not be justified.

"Certainly, corrupt practices in international football organisations ought not to be permitted to be spuriously choked by arid claims of confidentiality," the judgment says.

"It would be grotesque for a party implicated in corrupt activities to assert that the courts ought to defer to contractual arrangements importing confidence if those very arrangements are infected by sordid criminality. To adapt a well-known dictum, sunlight is the best disinfectant for corruption."

The 51-page judgment further notes that the decision to grant these pre-action interrogatories was wrongful, given that the information about the report in question had been reported on by other media without WSG attempting litigation.

The International Federation for Journalists (IFJ) welcomes the ruling as a step forward for media freedom in Singapore:

"It is a major victory in the battle against those who wish to suppress and undermine press freedom and freedom of expression in Singapore," said IFJ President Jim Boumelha in a statement on the IFJ website.

Monday, January 20, 2014

Egypt charter opens road for Sisi but youths alienated

By Mona Salem and Jay Deshmukh5 hours ago

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Cairo (AFP) - The approval of Egypt's constitution bolsters the powerful army chief but a large number of youths who helped topple two presidents within three years shunned the vote on the new charter.

Sisi led the overthrow of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in July following massive protests against his one-year rule, which came after an uprising in 2011 toppled his predecessor Hosni Mubarak.Egyptian voters have approved the Tuesday-Wednesday referendum by 98.1 percent, officials announced Saturday, and the results are seen as nod to General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to run for president.

Youth movements at the forefront of protests that ended the rules of Morsi and Mubarak hardly objected when the military-installed authorities launched a deadly crackdown on Morsi's supporters.

Nor did they object when his Muslim Brotherhood movement was banned and designated a "terrorist" organisation.

But they voiced their outrage when the military-backed authorities passed a law in November banning unauthorised demonstrations.

Egyptians celebrate in Tahrir square after a new constitution was approved on January 18, 2014 in Ca …

But Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood said in a statement young voters "were not busy with exams, but busy with demonstrations against the coup d'etat and the invalid referendum".

The new charter replaces an Islamist-inspired one adopted in a December 2012 referendum under Morsi with about two-thirds of the vote and a 33 percent turnout.

Nafea said the result showed, however, support for Sisi to run for president because "a large segment of Egyptians see the Brotherhood as a threat to the society".

Spectre of Mubarak era

Sisi has said he would run for the presidency if there was a popular demand.

The general is wildly popular with the millions who took to the streets against Morsi, but the Islamist's followers revile him for what they say was a "coup" against Egypt's first freely elected president.

A handout picture released by the Egyptian Ministry of Defence shows Egypt's military chief Abde …

The Brotherhood, reeling from a crackdown by the military-installed authorities that has seen thousands of Islamists arrested and more than 1,000 people killed, dismissed the referendum as a "farce".

Many youths agreed, but for different reasons.

"For us it is ironic that the constitution talks of freedom of speech and yet those who said no to the constitution have been jailed," said activist Mohamed Ghorab of the No to Military Trials of Civilians group.

"For many this is a reminder of the previous Mubarak era regime," he said.

Prominent youth leaders from the 2011 uprising against Mubarak have been jailed in recent weeks.

They include Ahmed Maher, Ahmed Douma and Mohamed Adel, convicted in December for organising an unlicensed protest -- days after a law was passed in November banning all but police-sanctioned demonstrations.

These convictions have been denounced by rights groups and experts who says they threaten the gains achieved since the toppling of Mubarak and signal a return of a police state.

Youths have also been angered by a flurry of reports in the local media that gave unflattering accounts of their role in the 2011 uprising.

Such articles, said the analyst Nafea, are seen by the youths as "an attempt to steal the June 30 revolution (against Morsi) for the benefit" of Mubarak cronies.

The non-Islamist youngsters "who participated in the revolt against Mubarak did not do that for a return to autocracy," said James Dorsey of Singapore's S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies.

"They are asking questions, and the question is whether the new regime will believe in liberal politics and there is no indication that it is going to do so," he added.

On Sunday, in an apparent attempt to appease young Egyptians, interim president Adly Mansour said "the youths... were the engine of two popular revolutions".

"But your role is not over yet... continue on the path and get involved in the political life... you know that freedoms are now guaranteed," he said live on state television.

Sunday, January 19, 2014

If Israeli soccer pitches are any indication, Israeli
attitudes towards Palestinians do not bode well for US Secretary of State John
Kerry’s Middle East peace efforts. The story echoing from the pitches is one of
racism, racial superiority, bigotry, double standards and little sincere effort
to address a key issue that undermines Israel’ s projection of itself as a
democratic state founded on the ashes of discrimination , prejudice and genocide.

Miri Regev, a parliament deputy for Prime Minister Benyamin
Netanyahu’s governing party and a former brigadier general, illustrated the
problem recently on her Facebook page. Ms. Regev called for the expulsion from
the premier league of Bnei Sakhnin, a top Israeli club from the Israeli
Palestinian town of Sakhnin, because its fans had flown Palestinian flags
during a recent match.

“The situation where a [soccer] club receives support from
the State of Israel as part of its sports-sponsorship policy, while the club
fans are waving the flags of Palestine, is unacceptable,” Ms. Regev said,
vowing to introduce legislation against the team in the Knesset, the Israeli
parliament. Israeli journalist Shlomi Eldar quoted a spectator as saying that fans
in one terrace of the town’s Doha Stadium had waved two small flags.

More serious was Ms. Regev’s omission of the fact that
supporters of Bnei Sakhnin’s arch rival, nationalist Beitar Jerusalem,
notorious for its militant, racist fan base, had burnt a Quran, the Muslim holy
book, during the match. Beitar sparked outrage last year when its fan unfurled
a yellow banner in a stadium emblazoned with the words, ‘Beitar, Pure Forever.’

The language and imagery reminiscent of Nazi propaganda was
a protest against the club’s hiring of two Muslim players from Chechnya. In a
country, in which Israeli Palestinians are among its top players, Beitar is the
only team to have never hired a Palestinian. Bnei Sakhnin, the first team from
an Israeli Palestinian town to win the State Cup, has had Israeli Palestinians
and Israeli Jews playing side by side from the day it was founded.

Soccer constitutes for Palestinians what football scholar
Tamer Sorek calls an integrative enclave, a space where non-Jewish Israelis are
fully accepted in Israeli society and able to flourish professionally without
inhibition.

Mr. Sorek tells the story of Israeli Palestinian club
Maccabi Kafr-Kana that in the mid-1990s visited Jordan to play against Al
Wehdat, a symbol of Palestinian nationalism named after the Palestinian refugee
camp in the Jordanian capital where it was founded. The match gained symbolic
importance because it pitted two teams projecting a shared identity against one
another that have long been divided by more than physical borders.

Residents of Al Wehdat included families that had fled
Kafr-Kana when the Jewish state was established. Minutes before the start of
the match, Al-Wehdat managers pulled Kafr-Kana’s manager and sponsor, Faysal
Khatib, aside to request that he not field his three Jewish players or if he
did to ensure that they would not speak Hebrew.

Mr. Khatib refused saying his team consisted of players, not
Palestinians and Jews, and that all his players spoke Hebrew, not Arabic. It
took Mr. Khatib several days to get his way. When the match was finally played,
Kafr-Kana won 3:2. Its three goals were scored by its non-Arabic speaking
players.

It’s a degree of standing up for principle that has yet to
be matched by the Israeli Football Association (IFA), the only Middle Eastern
governing soccer body to have an anti-racism unit and policy, or Beitar’s
management, whose efforts to curb the racism of its fans have been limited. The
IFA has repeatedly disciplined Beitar for the racism of its fans, but those
measures have had little effect.

To be fair, Israel is the not the only place where Israeli
and Palestinian identity politics spill onto the pitch. Dutch club Vitesse
sparked criticism when it went ahead earlier this month with a visit to the
United Arab Emirates despite a last minute decision by the UAE to ban the club’s
Israeli defender Dan Mori from entry. Similarly, Jewish groups were outraged
when in Chile the Palestine Football Club, founded in 1920 by Palestinian immigrants,
included all of Israel in a map of Palestine on its shirts. German club FSV
Frankfurt late last year cancelled a sponsorship agreement with state-owned
Saudi Arabian Airlines after it discovered that the carrier refuses Israeli passengers.

None of these incidents alter the image of Israel painted on
pitches in a country where Palestinians with Israeli citizenship constitute an
estimated 20 percent of the population. They like the recent Israeli government
announcement that it was licensing new homes on the occupied West Bank, inspire
little confidence that Israel is willing to match Secretary Kerry’s commitment
to Middle East Peace.

In fact, viewed from the pitch, Israeli reality may have
been more accurately depicted by Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon who was recently
quoted as saying that Mr. Kerry “who…is acting out of an incomprehensible
obsession and a messianic feeling - cannot teach me a single thing about the
conflict with the Palestinians. The only thing that can save us is if Kerry
wins the Nobel prize and leaves us alone." Mr. Yaalon was forced to
apologize for his comments.

James M. Dorsey is a Senior Fellow at the S.
Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological
University. He is also co-director of the University of Würzburg’s Institute
for Fan Culture, and the author of The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer blog and a forthcoming book with the same
title.

IFJ Welcomes “Ground-breaking” Decision by Singapore Court to Quash Order on Journalist’s Sources

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has today welcomed the landmark decision of a Singapore Court of Appeal to overturn an order that a journalist should disclose his sources for an article he had written on his blog.

James Dorsey, a Singapore-based journalist and author of the blog ‘The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer', had appealed against an order to disclose his sources for an article about the relationship between World Sports Group (WSG) and Mohammed Bin Hammam, a former Fifa Vice-President and one-time President of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC), who is now banned from the game.

In the first ever ruling of its kind in Singapore's history, the Court of Appeal held that the country's lower court was wrong to issue the order and quashed it, while also ordering that WSG should pay Mr Dorsey's costs for the appeal and any previous proceedings, his lawyers said in a statement.

The IFJ, which provided financial support and contributed legal advice on international norms about protection of sources to Mr.Dorsey throughout the process, has stated that the ruling represents a major step forward for media freedom in the country.

"We welcome this ground breaking and hugely positive ruling," said IFJ President Jim Boumelha. "It is a major victory in the battle against those who wish to suppress and undermine press freedom and freedom of expression in Singapore."

According to documents filed with the court, Dorsey had published information contained in a report by accountants PricewaterhouseCoopers Advisory on activities of the AFC while Mr Bin Hammam was its president, and on a commercial rights agreement between it and WSG.

WSG argued that Dorsey had had access to the PWC report, which was a breach of confidence, and said it wished to sue the person responsible for the leak, and was also considering suing Dorsey for defamation over a posting which appeared on his blog in August 2012.

Dorsey's lawyers said that the sports management company sought an order for Dorsey to make the disclosures under Singapore's pre-action interrogatories regime, which allows courts to order pre-action disclosure or discovery of information. The Lower court had ordered that Dorsey respond to the order and disclose his source.

However, the Court of Appeal set aside the order and found that the lower court had erred in granting the interlocutory interrogatories, pointing out that the information from the PWC report had been the subject of considerable coverage in national and international media, none of which was the subject of any attempted litigation by WSG.

Court of Appeal overturns order for journalist to reveal sources ; Judges rule that any pre-action interrogatory procedure should be allowed only after court has taken multi-factorial view

Amir Hussain Amir Hussain

612 words

16 January 2014

TODAY (Singapore)

TDAYSG

APM

26

English

(c) 2014. MediaCorp Press Ltd.

SINGAPORE — The Court of Appeal yesterday allowed a veteran journalist to withhold the source or sources from which he had obtained a confidential audit report on the Asian Football Confederation (AFC), overturning an earlier court order for him to reveal who he got the document from.

The highest court in the land also ruled that any pre-action interrogatory procedure should be allowed only after a court had taken a multi-factorial view and questioned whether it is just for the applicant to secure the information sought even before any proceedings are commenced.

Judge of Appeal V K Rajah, who delivered the judgment, said the application by the World Sports Group (WSG) was “premature”, noting that exposing corruption would override concerns over confidentiality.

Mr Dorsey, who is a Senior Fellow at the Nanyang Technological University’s S Rajaratnam School of International Studies, had in July and August 2012 used portions of the audit report on his blog, The Turbulent World ofMiddle East Soccer.

He wrote that the report detailed payments made to former AFC President Mohamed Bin Hammam by one of WSG’s shareholders before the two firms signed a US$1-billion (S$1.27-billion) agreement.

Singapore-based WSG has alleged that the audit report prepared by PricewaterhouseCoopers Advisory Service under instructions from the AFC — to review transactions, accounting practices and contracts negotiated during Mr Bin Hammam’s tenure — contains remarks defamatory of the firm, as the auditor was provided with inaccurate or incomplete information.

WSG then applied for the sources to be revealed so that it could sue the parties that leaked the audit report for breach of confidentiality.

In a 51-page written judgment, the Court of Appeal said that WSG had failed to make a case for compelling Mr Dorsey to reveal his source or sources.

The firm’s claim and whom it was making the claims against, were unclear, it added.

The Court of Appeal also noted that the information from the audit report had already been disseminated to other media organisations by unknown sources, and there was no evidence that Mr Dorsey, or the sources, were motivated by malice or ill will against WSG.

The Court of Appeal — which comprised Justice Rajah, Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon and Judge of Appeal Chao Hick Tin — also laid down guidelines on the pre-action interrogatory procedure, the process which WSG used to force Mr Dorsey to reveal his sources.

Justice Rajah pointed out that the procedure saves cost and time but there are problems with it: An applicant may engage in “fishing” for evidence to make out a claim which is wholly speculative, and there is a risk that an order for pre-action disclosure can increase the cost of resolving disputes.

Non-parties also have reasonable expectations in maintaining confidentiality and privacy.

The court also noted that pre-action interrogatories can only be ordered in relation to proceedings in a Singapore court, but there was no evidence that Mr Dorsey obtained the information here.

While it noted that Mr Dorsey was not protected as a witness under the Prevention of Corruption Act, the Court of Appeal said corrupt practices in international football organisations “ought not to be permitted to be spuriously cloaked by arid claims of confidentiality”.

“It would be grotesque for a party implicated in corrupt activities to assert that the courts ought to defer to contractual arrangements importing confidence if those very arrangements are infected by sordid criminality,” it added.

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

The Court of Appeal in Singapore has overturned an order
that a journalist should disclose the source of material he had written about
the relationship between World Sports Group (WSG) and former Fifa
vice-president Mohammed Bin Hammam.

Writer and scholar James Dorsey, a senior fellow at the
Singapore's S Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang
Technological University, and author of the blog The Turbulent World of Middle
East Soccer, had appealed against an order to disclose his sources for a report
about the relationship between World Sports Group (WSG) and Mohammed Bin
Hammam, a former Fifa vice-president and one-time president of the Asian
Football Confederation (AFC) who is now banned from the game.

A Singapore court had ordered him to respond to
pre-action interrogatories which WSG had wanted completed.

The sports management group had argued that Mr Dorsey
should provide the information because he had obtained confidential material
from a source or sources, and had defamed the company in his blog.

But it had failed to launch any direct claims against Mr
Dorsey, either for breach of confidence in receiving the material, or for
defamation.

The row centred on publication of details of a report by
accountants PricewaterhouseCoopers Advisory on activities by the AFC while Mr
Bin Hammam was its president, and on a commercial rights agreement between it
and WSG.

WSG sought an order for Mr Dorsey to make the disclosures
under Singapore's pre-action interrogatories regime, which allows courts to
order pre-action disclosure or discovery of information, or issue the
equivalent of Norwich Pharmacal orders so that would-be litigants can obtain
relevant information from third parties.

The firm argued that Mr Dorsey had had access to the PWC
report, and that that access was in breach of confidence, and said it wished to
sue the person responsible for the leak and was considering suing him for
defamation over a posting which appeared on his blog in August 2012.

The Singapore Court of Appeal held that the lower courts
were wrong to issue the interlocutory interrogatories, and quashed them.

It also ordered that WSG should pay Mr Dorsey's costs for
the appeal and the previous proceedings on the indemnity basis.

It pointed out that the PWC report was the subject of
considerable coverage in national and international media - none of which was
the subject of any attempted litigation by WSG.

The court considered the interrogatories regime and
issued guidance on the manner in which it should operate.

It said that from the start of the application WSG had
asserted that an unknown person had disseminated the PWC report to various
media organisations.

"In our opinion the level of exposure that the PWC
report had been given in the international press and the fact that there was no
credible evidence that WSG had been singled out for mention by the
international media or Dorsey casts some doubt over the 'real interest' that
WSG has in needing to identify these 'sources' so as to commence legal
proceedings against such sources," it said.

"Further, there is no evidence that either Dorsey or
the source(s) were motivated by malice or ill feeling against WSG.

"These factors must be taken into account in
weighing the scales of competing interests in assessing whether the pre-action
interrogatories should be ordered.

"If Dorsey was not the only person who was privy to
the PWC report, it is curious why WSG should be focussing on Dorsey alone, and
in particular, Dorsey's sources when in fact there were other extensive
communications with the international media."

It "seems odd", said the court, that WSG should
claim that its reputation was severely damaged but had not acted immediately to
clear its name by suing Mr Dorsey directly even while trying to find the
sources of the leak.

The material in the PWC report had now been so widely
publicised that it could no longer be considered confidential, the court said.

WSG, it said, had to explain why, although the PWC report
was leaked to man y media outlets, the leak to Mr Dorsey alone remained its
only legal action anywhere.

The court asked: "What about all the other media
outlets that covered this scandal?

"WSG has simply failed to address this curious state
of affairs.

Further, there is absolutely no indication that WSG has
taken any other steps to find out the identity of the source(s). This invites
further vexing questions as to WSG's reasons for seeking Dorsey's sources even
before initiating proceedings to clear its name."

The question of whether there was any genuine connection
to Singapore and its courts was also unclear, the Court of Appeal said, adding
that "considering WSG's vague allegations of Dorsey's wrongdoing, the
sheer uncertainty of where this alleged wrongdoing took place is a strong
factor which weighs against the ordering of pre-action interrogatories in aid
of proceedings beyond Singapore".

It was not enough for WSG to hypothesise that "the
information was as likely to have been received in Singapore was anywhere
else" because, on the established facts, "the converse was just as
likely".

The Court of Appeal said that if the assertions in the
PWC report and Mr Dorsey's blog post implicating WSG were true, "it may be
difficult for WSG to insist that its interests in confidentiality would
override the wider interest in exposing corruption everywhere."

It went on: "We think it would be fanciful to argue
against the proposition that the exposure of flagrant corruption (as in the
present case, where allegations of such a nature were made) is in the public
interest anywhere. Serious wrongdoing of such a nature should be laid bare in
the public interest."

The court, which stressed that it was making no findings
of fact about the truth or otherwise of any of the allegations raised in the
case, as that was not an issue for its determination, added that when it came
to corruption, similar public interest considerations applied to officials in
international organisations such as sports bodies as they did to public
officials.

"Certainly, corrupt practices in international
football organisations ought not to be permitted to be spuriously choked by arid claims of confidentiality," it
said.

"It would be grotesque for a party implicated in
corrupt activities to assert that the courts ought to defer to contractual
arrangements importing confidence if those very arrangements are infected by
sordid criminality. To adapt a well-known dictum, sunlight is the best
disinfectant for corruption."

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About Me

James M DorseyWelcome to The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer by James M. Dorsey, a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. Soccer in the Middle East and North Africa is played as much on as off the pitch. Stadiums are a symbol of the battle for political freedom; economic opportunity; ethnic, religious and national identity; and gender rights. Alongside the mosque, the stadium was until the Arab revolt erupted in late 2010 the only alternative public space for venting pent-up anger and frustration. It was the training ground in countries like Egypt and Tunisia where militant fans prepared for a day in which their organization and street battle experience would serve them in the showdown with autocratic rulers. Soccer has its own unique thrill – a high-stakes game of cat and mouse between militants and security forces and a struggle for a trophy grander than the FIFA World Cup: the future of a region. This blog explores the role of soccer at a time of transition from autocratic rule to a more open society. It also features James’s daily political comment on the region’s developments. Contact: incoherentblog@gmail.comView my complete profile